Distributed Planning, Debriefing, and after-action-review Capability

The need for an effective interactive system for training geographically distributed teams in mission planning, debriefing and after-action-review is compelling. SDS proposes SCABARD – a system embodying an extensive portfolio of capabilities to meet this necessity. It leverages technologies from its predecessors – the Decision-Skills-Training-Web-Module and NEXWARS sponsored by OSD/AFRL and ONR/USMC respectively – and incorporates novel approaches to address unsolved challenges. Both incorporate a distributed architecture, comprised of systems dynamically configured as an administrative master or as a subservient client. Each system encapsulates a comprehensive toolset containing USA/USMC C2PC software, a Stealth, Microsoft’s NetMeeting, and GOTS Marine-Digital-Voice to provide a dependable platform for executing, monitoring and reviewing missions. These technologies shall form the foundation of SCABARD while incorporating numerous new features. They include methods for bi-directional 2D–3D terrain morphing; visualizing line of sight to points or paths from its neighborhood; estimating least-cost paths across a terrain; electronically plotting, assigning and distributing routes, and monitoring the fidelity of their execution by team members; annotating events in an exercise using text or audio-embedded visual markers and replaying them by selection using human interface devices; and recording exercises to multi-attribute-indexed databases permitting event extraction during after-action review through voice or text-based queries.